Under the Blackbird's Wing
by Chibi Haku
Summary: A chance meeting in the shadows becomes a bond of friendship across worlds. Two teens obsessed with darkness, both are searching for a person they care about... and atonement. [Crossover with Fullmetal Alchemist [manga]] [RikuxEdward] [themes]


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**Under the Blackbird's Wing**

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The living shadow stood just outside of the flickering ring of light his candle made, its proverbial nose twitching. The eerie glow of its eyes reflected orange in the darkness, the faintest outline of its bug-like antennae possible to make out because of the contrast it made between dark and mostly dark. And there was a difference. A small one, granted, but the slight blue-black tinge it had made his accustomed eyes pick it out and see it's every movement. 

"_Come on, you fucker. Come one step closer, I dare you_." His grip shifted on the Oblivion's handle, becoming tighter and slightly more confident, even as he panted in exhaustion from where he was slumped against one of the many buildings of the World That Never Was. "_I can take you out_." His breathing was laboured though, and he highly doubted he had so much energy as to even lift the Key shaped blade he was holding, let alone swing it.

The candle flickered, spluttered, died.

The creature that had been hovering outside of its range of light jumped before the smoke had even started rising from what remained of the candle stump. He brought up his right arm in an instinctual movement of defence as his mind went completely blank beyond the comprehension that he was probably going to go the same way as his candle.

However, after the brief moment in which he expected sharp, shadowy claws to scimitar him to pieces didn't come, he opened his eyes the barest slit and slowly dropped his right arm away from his face. The creature was impaled of the end of a long blade similar to the one he held so tightly his left fist hurt. He consciously relaxed his grip then, just staring up at his saviour, a person clad in a dark robe with a hood pulled over their head which obscured his vision of their features besides one lock of silver hair that seemed to escape the shadows. The creature impaled on the blade squirmed once before it exploded, showering the surrounding areas with a black gunk as a shadowy gas escaped it. The person pulled the blade back and from the remains of the creature a red-coloured, heart-shaped crystal, almost the same colour as an incomplete stone escaped the remains and shot into the dark sky. He watched it, amazed.

The person above him hovered for a moment, unsure, before they said something in a language that he didn't recognise. The voice used was distinctly male; a rich tenor with the slightest unsure tone that suggested the person was in his mid-to-late teens.

He looked blankly at the other boy (he was sure that's what they were now) for a moment, before quietly saying, "_I don't understand you._" In his own native tongue. Unsure how he could tell with the boy's hood obscuring his face like that, he had the distinct impression that he was being graced with a baffled, uncomprehending look. He sighed, whispering a string of explicatives under his breath. Great. His saviour and he did not speak the same language. This was going to be just -

"...English?" The other one tried, "Do you speak English?" Well, not as fluently as he spoke German or Italian, but sure, he could live with the compromise.

"Not very well." He said.

The other nodded, seeming to accept this. They had found an even ground on which they could communicate. Not a favourable situation for either of them, but it was better than nothing. Much better. He reached out with his right hand to pick up his candle stump, trying to save the wick before the beeswax hardened over it, but it looked like he was too late. He swore. That was his last one too, and he had a feeling that the light was the only thing keeping those... creatures at bay. Speaking of which... "What was that thing?"

His... companion, he supposed, started as if that was the last question he had been expecting. Still, the young man answered quietly and seriously. "It was a Heartless, a being without a heart." He nodded in reply to the words. He was strangely calm in the face of this strange world and its strange creatures but he supposed that was partly to do with the fact that he was too tired to move after seemingly endless hours of keeping the shadowy creatures at bay. There was a silence between them for a moment, an uncomfortable one. He found he wasn't surprised, he didn't do too well with first meetings and he had the feeling that the stranger didn't either.

Finally, the other spoke. "Where are you camped?"

"Here."

He somehow knew he was being graced with an incredulous look beneath that hood. "You'll be dead well before morning if you stay here. They will keep coming." There was no need to ask who they were. The person across from him sighed. "There are precious few safe houses on this world, I can take you to one if you'd like."

He laughed cynically in the face of the stranger's generosity. "Forgive me, but I don't trust people wearing long black cloaks who keep their faces hidden. Call me _paranoid._" He was inwardly impressed at the dry tone he'd managed. And that bastard had the gall to smile at him. It was radiating in smug waves, that bastard quality that a certain other person he knew had.

"Understandable" The other said, equally dryly before he reached black gloved hands up, pulling back the black hood. A long mane of silver hair was shaken free from the leather; it seemed to glow in contrast to the black of the world around it. (Here, he noted that his eyes had very quickly gotten used to the gloom, when his candle had gone out, he could barely see.) The stranger's face was revealed in the soft glow of the impossibly shaped moon. It was Asian and feminine, but with a contrasting strong jaw line and stubborn chin. His companion kept his eyes hidden behind a black strip of fabric, tied in a crude knot at the back, the ends frayed and worn. The strip of fabric only added to the strange beauty of the man, it accented his face rather than hid it away.

"What's it for?" He asked, unable to quell that small spark of curiosity that lingered.

"My eyes can't lie." The teen replied.

Looking around, he noted that there were certain things that he didn't want to see, and he could almost say he could agree with the teen. Almost, but not quite. He sighed. Ask no questions and be told no lies. "I'm Edward." He said finally, swiping his right hand through his hair.

"Riku." The stranger replied. "_Hajime mashite_."

"Huh?" Edward stared blankly.

The young man paused for a moment, and thenseemed to awkwardly realise that he'd slipped back into that godforsaken language that Edward didn't understand a word of. Not that there was a God. If there was, he wouldn't have had to see his world be destroyed (Not that Edward was _bitter_ about that. Not at all.)

Riku sighed. "Never mind." He said with just the slightest tinge of embarrassment. "Let's just get out of here before the Heartless attack again."

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The streets were unusually silent as the two wandered down them, Riku supporting a lot of his companion's weight. It had been an awkward scene when the voluntarily blind young man had tried to get Edward's arm about his shoulders, he'd discovered that his companion was at most five and a half feet tall. (Someone shorter than Sora, he noted, and then silenced the thought because such thoughts always made him realise the gravity of his situation.)The arm, therefore, had been slung about his waist and he half-dragged the exhausted and trembling boy along towards the safe house. He noted that the footfalls of this Edward person were uneven, the left falling much heavier than the right. It sounded like a permanent thing; the spacing between the falls was even if shaky, it wasn't something that exhaustion alone could be blamed for. That caught Riku's interest. Did the boy have a limp? It didn't feel that way from the way the arm about his waist moved evenly with the footfalls. Puzzling. 

He filed it away for later thought, because he doubted the boy would answer should he ask. Ask no questions and be told no lies.

How did such an enigma, however, become the wielder of a Keyblade? They seemed to be springing up everywhere, first Sora, then him, and the rumours in the shadow spoke of an Organisation member who wielded two. Finally, slightly annoyed with the awkward silence, Riku asked, "Why do you have a Keyblade?"

There was a pause in which Edward said nothing, and then, "A what?"

"A Keyblade." Riku repeated, touching the blade that the boy was still tightly gripping in his left hand. "This."

He felt the boy at his side shrug, "I woke up with it." Riku waited for him to elate, but the pause caused them to lapse into silence once again. Riku became very aware suddenly that the boy did not trust him. It was with good reason, Riku supposed, for he came to the conclusion that he didn't trust Edward either, but he refused to let someone die that he could help. It wasn't like Edward was a nobody, either. The arm around his waist contained a human heat, and his voice was alive with emotion, not dry and dead like one of the organisation members.

That said, the silence was really starting to bother him. "Only Sora is supposed to have a Keyblade." He finally said.

"Who's Sora?"

A pause. "A friend."

There was a snort issued at his side as he graciously sidestepped a grating that his toes touched. "Damn you and your bad answers." Edward said, sounding angry. "You're just like Mustang, did you know that?"

Riku snorted and with no small sense of irony asked, "Who's Mustang?"

"An asshole." Edward replied scathingly and silence came again.

They walked on in much this way for the next five minutes, Edward's breathing slowly becoming more laboured as they went. They navigated their way through a field of debris that Riku knew by touch, he kept one hand out to feel his way through and check to make sure no more rubble had fallen from the decaying buildings all around.

"This place... what is it?" Edward asked.

Riku frowned as he thought of how best to answer, especially given the boy's language slip. "This is a world of darkness." He said after a while. "A world people find when they're searching for both someone and something."

"Forgiveness?" Edward asked.

"Atonement." Riku replied, but Edward didn't seem proficient enough in the English language to understand the difference.

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Note: _Hajime Mashite: _(**Japanese**. Literal translation: _It is the beginning._ English equivalent in context: _It is nice to meet you for the first time_) 

Why I used it: Riku knows Japanese, but Edward doesn't. Riku had what linguists call a "language switch" He was introducing himself for the first time, and used the Japanese formality. Edward of course, didn't understand what the hell was happening, which is why I didn't translate it.

_A/n: ...I want everyone to acknowledge the pretty that is this pairing. I am aware that it only works in crossovers and that there are not many good ones of those, but that's why I like Kingdom Hearts. You can cross it with ANYTHING thanks to the nature of the game._

_And no, I'm not switching fandoms, don't worry, it's still FMA all the way for me. However, I LOVE the Kingdom Hearts games and I bought KH2 about a fortnight after it came out in Australia. It took me a grand total of three days to beat it; that was how much it grabbed my soul. XD (**Disclaimer**: The three days was just under 25 hours of gameplay. It was also a Friday night and a weekend. My suggestion if you want to play KH or KH2 is to NOT do this. When I start a game, I play it in an unhealthy way that means I don't stop until I'm finished. This is not good for me and I do not recommend playing video games in this way at all.)_

_Also, about the language switch. I am very sorry for it. I don't write bilingually on principle, but that was one that I had to put in for the sake of the fiction. Sorry about that, won't happen again._

_Anyway. I'm thinking about starting a fanfiction rotation so I actually get updates out on a reasonable time frame. My hectic and scattered way of writing things is making my fictions suffer; I need to start setting myself deadlines, otherwise I'll never get my babies finished. XD _

_Leave a little review? -Shakes her tin imploringly- _


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